Concrete Collective launches on 10th January 2019 with the Call & Response exhibition at Centrespace, Bristol.

Concrete Collective is a newly founded art and design collective made up of three MA multi-disciplinary printmakers, Gen Harrison, Graham Cook and Ella Sparkes. Their exhibition, Call & Response, is opening from 6pm until 9pm on 10th January 2019 and launches the Concrete Collective. The exhibition is at Centrespace in the centre of Bristol, and continues daily from 11am until 6pm, until 15th January 2019. It features a strong mix of the photographic and graphical expressed through the process of print.

Call & Response, sees Harrison, Cook and Sparkes draw on a common interest in the city to explore narratives of navigation, construction, and individual interaction within a public space. The work seeks to start a conversation with the built environment and those who occupy and inhabit it. What is the language of a city? How does it speak to us as we journey through? How do we respond? What happens to our transit as the city transitions? What is the perception of a public space? How do people 'own it' and exploit its possibilities? Are we influenced, architecturally, in our thinking?

Gen Harrison presents a series of screen prints, Word on the Street, an ongoing body of work which explores the idea of typography as topography. She is interested in the environments we construct (both real and imagined) through the language we use, and how we (as individuals) create and navigate the public space to come together in-between.

Graham Cook’s recurring journeys to New York City spanning almost two decades since the beginning of the 21st century, has produced a personal body of work which not only nods to the Masters, associated with the New York School of Photography (1930-50’s) and it’s appreciation of the fleeting street conversations, but modernises with a sense of individual character and spontaneity that evokes a sense of recognition that connects a dialogue of past and present.

Build showcases Ella Sparkes’ ongoing attraction to the contrast of line, shape and texture that the city constantly provides. Influenced by architecture, structures, materials and movement, the work captures, through clever juxtaposition of collage, photography, and graphics, how we mark our immediate urban landscape.

The exhibition also seeks to visualize conversations between members of the Collective. How does this work call to the others and how do they then respond? These pieces seek to start a dialogue for wider public engagement, and there will be space provided for visitors to create their own response during the exhibition, which will become part of a Call & Response wall. This work will become part of the ongoing discourse and form part of a publication, documenting the exhibition.